The prior art discloses methods of and apparatus for optically discovering surface phenomena such as roughness, flatness, distortion, and parallelism of front and back surfaces through the use of diffuse and/or specular surface reflections. See for instance: U.S. Pat. No. 2,446,628--Flatness Testing Apparatus which issued Aug. 10, 1948 to F. M. Brown; U.S. Pat. No. 3,430,055--Surface Flaw Detector which issued Feb. 25, 1969 to E. E. Metzger; U.S. Pat. No. 3,584,963--Optical Flaw Detector which issued June 15, 1971 to Daniel A. Wisner; U.S. Pat. No. 3,591,291--Method And Apparatus For Sensing Reflected Light And Diffused Light From A Surface To Indicate The Roughness Of Said Surface which issued July 6, 1971 to Milton Greer; U.S. Pat. No. 3,799,679--Glass Distortion Scanning System which issued Mar. 26, 1974 to Gabriel Simko; U.S. Pat. No. 3,804,521--Optical Device For Measuring Surface Roughness which issued April 16, 1974 to Robert A. Sprague; U.S. Pat. No. 3,857,637--Surface Distortion Analyzer which issued Dec. 31, 1974 to Robert J. Obenreder; and, U.S. Pat. No. 3,922,093--Device For Measuring The Roughness Of A Surface which issued Nov. 25, 1975 to Rene Dandliker et al. Also see U.S. Pat. No. 3,439,988--Apparatus For Inspecting A Reflective Surface Which Includes A Projector Of A Pattern Of Lines Having Different Thicknesses which issued Apr. 22, 1969 to C. D. Breske which causes the pattern of lines to be projected onto the reflective surface of interest and which enables discovering imperfections in the reflective surface of interest by looking for distortions in the reflected pattern lines on a screen. Document reading or scanning devices are also shown in the prior art. See for instance: U.S. Pat. No. 3,345,908--Print Characteristics Displayer which issued Oct. 10, 1967 to R. A. Jensen; and U.S. Pat. No. 3,792,268--Document Scanner Having Optical Diffusion Means which issued Feb. 12, 1974 to Brian Kenneth Bjerke et al. The prior art also discloses an optical comparitor having a coaxial fiber optic tip; reference U.S. Pat. No. 3,784,309 which issued Jan. 8, 1974 to Rene Brelot et al. However, the prior art does not disclose method or apparatus solutions to all of the problems associated with discovering and relatively quantifying subsurface anamolous structure in translucent articles in the manner of or to the degree of the present invention.